Teacher Troubles

Across the country, teachers are being harassed by students playing pranks. Sometimes, these jokes result in the teachers losing their jobs. But, could the mischief your kids get into end up costing you thousands of dollars?

Ruined by Her Past?

"I have been a good teacher, but one day, everything just blew up in my face," says Tericka. "Doing pornographic material has ruined my teaching career and my life." She appeared in her first porno film 11 years ago at age 22. "I was homeless. I was a mother of two. I was broke and wound up meeting some strippers who introduced me to stripping. I was making a lot of irrational decisions, porn only being the worst," she admits.

Although she became a teacher and tried to put her past behind her, the pornographic videos eventually surfaced. "A student had it in possession and was showing it to other students," she says. "I was called into my principal's office, and he said he had to call the school board. Within a matter of minutes, they had suspended me and asked me to leave the grounds. Everything I had worked for was gone." Tericka was suspended with pay, and the school did not renew her contract.

Tericka says that her skills as a teacher have been overlooked. "It doesn't seem to matter to the schools that I have had perfect reviews as a teacher. They only seem to care that I'm an ex-porn star," she says.

Tericka says she misses being in the classroom and teaching the kids. "I just don't understand how you can take a teacher who has put so much into it, and suspend them for something that is 11 years in the past," she says. "I did live with the fear that somehow, someday, it would catch up with me. I just didn't know that it would ruin me."